In newspaper vending, the theft of newspapers from newspaper vending machines has been a long-standing problem.
A person purchasing a newspaper from conventional newspaper vending machines can, upon depositing the required coins in the machine, take from the machine multiple copies of the newspaper. In fact, conventional newspaper vending machines do not have any way of preventing the wholesale theft of all of the newspapers from the machine once the machine is opened by the purchaser. These conventional newspaper vending machines are known as "honor boxes" because the vendor must rely on the honesty of the purchaser to safeguard against the theft of newspapers.
The loss to newspaper vendors because of this problem has been and remains significant, and the industry has for many years had a need for an effective single vend machine in order to make it very difficult or impossible for the purchaser to take more than one newspaper from the vending machine for each vend operation.
To date, the prior attempts at making a reliable single newspaper vending machine have not been completely effective. For example, in certain prior single vend machines a complicated belt and pulley arrangement is used, and when this arrangement jams, the purchaser is unable to remove the newspaper from the machine. The machine cannot operate until the jam is cleared by the vendor, resulting in a loss of business to the vendor.